SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- That scavengers have increased in Cuba, who find in waste an alternative to obtain money in the midst of the crisis, is not surprising. It would be surprising, perhaps, to know that many of them even live in garbage.
This is what happens with the landfill located on the First Ring Road and the Havana-Melena highway, where more than 70 people gather daily to “glean” the garbage, as confirmed by a collaborator of CubaNet who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.
In that area, there are people who have made a home out of the garbage dump: they cook, they find useful objects and many pieces of materials that they can later exchange for money.
This is the case of a scavenger who lives in the place. Once a teacher, he has now set up his house out of waste and an improvised kitchen in the landfill.
Although he resides in El Cotorro, the man, an educator by profession, found a way of life in the trash and has moved deeper and deeper into the place, to the point of ending up living there.
His story is not the only one of its kind. “It’s a garbage dump where they go to look for things, but they spend days there, they cook, they sleep in improvised houses,” said the collaborator of CubaNet.
And the authorities?
The police seem to have no impact there. They only come to accompany a truck when it dumps chemical waste or decomposed food, and they bury it a little, “cover it up.”
However, the scavengers, when the police leave, dig up everything and rescue what they can “and sell in those markets in Havana.”
From the landfill they obtain aluminum, copper, and vehicle tires, which they then sell to houses that are dedicated to buying what they collect.
When reality imitates fiction
The images would seem taken from the novel Avenue brazilBrazilian and broadcast in Cuba about a decade ago.
In the production, another of those that paralyzed Cuban homes for telling shocking stories, an ambitious man takes advantage of children to get money from the garbage they recycle.
Numerous and shocking scenes take place in a landfill. There they find their way of subsistence and spend long days in contact with garbage.
In a habitat of rodents and disease-transmitting insects, the scavengers of this reality (never fiction) located in Cuba are exposed to constant risks to their health. However, for them, it seems, there is no danger.
Stories of “divers,” as those who scavenge in garbage dumps are popularly called, abound. Elderly people, retirees, and people of all kinds have found true niches in garbage dumps that have helped them survive.
Living off garbage has become an increasing option in Cuba. Low salaries and poor pensions contrast with the high prices of basic necessities and mean that men, women and the elderly are everywhere with sacks or bags full of empty cans or plastic that they hope to sell as raw materials.
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